I use this blog to gather information and thoughts about invention and innovation, the subjects I've been teaching at Stanford University Continuing Studies Program since 2005.
The current course is Innovation Timing (Winter '17).
Our book "Scalable Innovation" is now available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Scalable-Innovation-Inventors-Entrepreneurs-Professionals/dp/1466590971/

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The "whatness" of iPhone.

At the most basic, marketers are taking advantage of the iPhone's advanced video and screen capabilities by creating streaming video ads. But some are taking things further by offering ads disguised as apps. The latter allow users to do such things as play games or manipulate images by touching the phone's screen.
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To minimize the risk and cost of iPhone advertising, at least one marketing company is now buying existing iPhone applications and revamping them with clients' brands.

Before Lions Gate Entertainment released its action movie "Crank: High Voltage" in April, the media-strategy firm Initiative paid for the rights to a popular iPhone game app called Stun-o-matic. Initiative redesigned the app with movie-related art and a link to a trailer for the film.

The process took less than a month, half the time it would have taken to create a new application from scratch, says Ezra Cooperstein, a vice president at Initiative. The application got two million downloads and 800,000 trailer views.

"Phone" in iPhone is great for disguising the true software nature of the device. The Internet infrastructure has been changing dramatically to accommodate the growing density of mobile usage.

According to Mobclix Inc., which analyzes iPhone usage, iPhones generate more than half the total Web traffic from smartphones. The average iPhone user has installed five to 10 applications on the device, compared with fewer than two apps for the overall smartphone market.